Balenciaga Paris

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Perhaps you’ve heard of Balenciaga before, no, not their handbags that seem to be gaining in popularity these days. I’m talking about Le Dix, the street, the clothes, and the perfume. Mostly the perfume though. It’s a classic aldehyde, beautiful, but that’s not who we’re talking about today. Let’s jam it up with Balenciaga Paris.

Balenciaga Paris

In Bottle: Paris opens with a sheer, undetected level of sophistication and elegance. It’s violets and sun dew floating in the air.

Applied: Paris is incredibly light, it clings close to the skin and stays close for hours upon hours but what it won’ do is shout. This is a scent that’s meant to stay personal. I smell violets first of all, sweet little powdery violets drenched in dew. The mid-stage sees more violets, the dewy quality evaporating leaving me with a little bit of spice a nice hint of woods and a quiet little whisper of patchouli on the dry down. You shouldn’t expect projection with this fragrance. Paris’ angle is subtle and sleek. Get them while they’re close and keep them there with that violet softness.

Extra: Balenciaga is a fashion house with its headquarters in Paris, France. It was established in 1914. Other popular fragrances by house Balenciaga include Cristobal, Rumba and Le Dix.

Design: I love the bottle. I love its cap, love its shape, love the heft of it. It’s got nice weight, nice aesthetics and even though it’s a bit busier than the usual things I like, the business is well-designed, well-proportioned and very balanced.

Fragrance Family: Modern Chypre

Notes: Bergamot, spices, pepper, violet, carnation, oakmoss, cedar, vetiver, labdanum, patchouli.

Yes, believe it or not, this is a modern chypre. It’s got the right build though.

Reviewed in This Post: Balenciaga Paris, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Chanel Coco

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Chanel Coco is resting near the top of my favorite Chanel perfumes list. This fragrance couldn’t be any further from its younger incarnation, the pink and bubbly Coco Mademoiselle.

Chanel Coco

In Bottle: Add in spice for warm, a wispy thread of flowers, and a delicately peeled citrus note. Coco smells warm right off the bat with a bit of citrus to clean it up.

Applied: Coco wastes no time just digging into this. It comes off spicy right away, throwing cinnamon and clove at you to warm itself up as the citrus and wispy flowers quickly give way to the midstage where we’re greeted with a delightfully clean, spicy, warm jasmine and rose complex. A lot of perfumes rely on jasmine and rose together but that never seems to make the combination any less beautiful–particularly when it’s used in such a fine tuned balanced such as in Coco. There is the smallest drop of civet in this during the later half of the midstage. The civet in Coco is so well done and well balanced. I don’t normally like it in perfumes but this civet blends really well with the overarching spicy cleanness that the note adds a depth and sensual feel to the fragrance without making it smell too harsh and alienating. The dry down is an equally spicy amber with a hint of sandalwood and a smooth layer of tonka.

Extra: Chanel Coco was released in 1984 and was composed by Chanel’s in house perfumer, Jacques Polge. It is a little sad to see that when you do a search for “Chanel Coco”, most of the results come back for Coco Mademoiselle.

Design: Like most of Chanel’s other widely popular fragrances, Coco comes in various packaging. If you go for the full service parfum concentration deal you get a glass rectangular bottle so often associated with No. 5. Coco’s bottle has a black seal band running around the neck and a black label.

Fragrance Family: Spicy Oriental

Notes: Angelica, mimosa, frangipani, mandarin, cascarilla, orange flower, Bulgarian rose, jasmine, labdanum, ambrette seed, opopanax, benzoin, tonka, vanilla.

Like with most Chanel fragrances, Coco lasts a very long, very impressive time. She’s a sophisticated lady and entirely wearable considering the era it came out in.

Reviewed in This Post: Coco, 2009, Eau de  Parfum.

Chanel 31 Rue Cambon

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31 Rue Cambon is like a modern miracle. It’s a chypre. A modern one though, and being a modern chypre it is still missing the ever beloved and tragically lost, oakmoss. Yet 31 Rue Cambon still manages to pull the modern chypre off with elegance and classic flair.  31 Rue Cambon

In Bottle: A beautifully done iris note is a predominant player in this fragrance with a nice woodsiness to it that takes its sophistication up a few more notches still. There’s a sweetness lingering up front in 31 Rue Cambon that adds the “modern” section of this fragrance. Finally, there is a soft powdery note to this as well which is what gives it that classical scent to me.

Applied: Slightly aldehydic with a generous layering of florals and a splash of bergamot with a note of sweetness added in. 31 Rue Cambon goes on from the opening with a powdery introduction of the iris, and very decadent-smelling rose and jasmine, with some wood notes that blend well with the opener to create a complex blend of warm, leathery, powdery fragrance. This  makes me think of Coco by Chanel wrapped up in an ivy and rose dress. 31 Rue Cambon is a short-lived beauty as it approached its dry down within a matter of hours. A strange thing given the fact that most Chanels last forever on me. Its end game is no stranger to zip as it dries down with a warm, complex, leatheriness.

Extra: 31 Rue Cambon is one of the more popular fragrances from Chanel’s Les Exclusifs collection of fragrances. I can’t say I’m a major fan of many of Chanel’s mainstream releases as of late, but their Les Exclusifs line stick well to the older script that bears creative beautiful little masterpieces like this one.

Design: The Les Exclusifs line is designed to look fairly similar with a tall rectangular bottle, white label, bold and clean black letter. True Chanel minimalist style. The bottles also feature that fantastic magnetic click cap that I couldn’t seem to get enough of on Bleu de Chanel.

Fragrance Family: Modern Chypre

Notes: Pepper, bergamot, orris, narcissus, jasmine, patchouli, ambrette, vetiver, labdanum.

I’ll be blunt in noting that I hold no love for most modern chypres because they tend to smell nothing like a chypre should. But 31 Rue Cambon is as close as it’s going to get, and while the chypre in this is still masked behind a big modern personality, it manages to smell classic, elegant and truly Chanel.

Reviewed in This Post: 31 Rue Cambon, 2009, Eau de Toilette.

Agonist The Infidels

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Agonist has recently come out with a new perfume which spurred the memory of this perfume and it’s crazy abstract bottle. So I dug out my sampler vial and gave her a sniff.

Agonist Infidels

The Infidels by Agonist

In Bottle: Dark, earthy blackcurrant note. The blackcurrant is the most prominent smell I’m getting so far from The Infidels.

Applied: Yep blackcurrant. Not the sweet berries or tea-like blackcurrants, but this earthy, dark jammy blackcurrant note that’s very rich and dense. That currant note is an ever-present entity during the entire fragrance as The Infidels digs into the mid-stage with a slight showing of florals that helps with that earthiness. It’s not particularly interesting in the mid-stage but the end game is a bit better, as The Infidels takes it blackcurrant and plays in a touch of lavender with a woody, green patchouli and warm amber. Very interesting fragrance, though is the juice worth its price? I’m going to have to say that while this stuff smells interesting, it isn’t the best or even anywhere near my top fragrances. So to me, no, it’s not worth the price.

Extra: Priced at $495 for 1.7oz, The Infidels is quite a bit out of reach of most people’s budgets. This is one of those fragrances that have been priced so beyond affordability and practicality that it lands in Clive Christian territory, and that’s a double-edged sword. You can, however, bite the bullet and purchase the glass art bottle for $495 and get the subsequent refills for a–all things considered–reasonable $90 for 50ml.

Design: The design for this bottle is polarizing. There are people who think it’s a beautiful piece of abstract glass art and other people who just can’t figure out what it’s supposed to be. And some people who look at it and simply think it’s hideous. I’m a member of the, “Oooh! Glass art!” crowd. Agonist’s bottle is probably most of the price of the juice as it’s truly a beautiful, misunderstood, piece of artwork. It’s unlike any other perfume bottle I’ve seen out there, it’s strange, it’s compelling, it’s dramatic with the contrast between the redness and black and clear glass. It’s got that crazy application stick too that you don’t see much of. Everything about this bottle speaks of daring, dangerous, and blood. The fragrance isn’t shouting that stuff but the packaging certainly is and I appreciate this thing for the artistic merit of it and the boundaries it pushes in traditional and contemporary bottle design. This bottle is like the high fashion runway. You don’t have to understand it to appreciate it.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Earthy

Notes: Blackcurrant, green cumin, bergamot, magnolia, tonka, lavender, patchouli, amber, labdanum.

Let’s not kid ourselves, the major reason to own this perfume is for the bottle. The juice inside is pleasant enough but it’s second fiddle to the packaging.

Reviewed in This Post: The Infidels, 2010, Eau de  Parfum.

Chypre de Coty

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I have a small (very small) half ml of Chypre de Coty that stands upright in a plugged tester vial that holds another tester vial that holds my trace amount of Chypre de Coty that I would love to own more of. Unfortunately, it is a rare scent and it goes for quite a pretty penny. It is also very, very beautiful. Chypre de Coty

In Bottle: This isn’t just a chypre. And certainly not the diluted, heavily modified modern chypres of today. Chypre de Coty is the chypre. It’s a genre definer and it smells the part. Green, lush, and somehow personal. This reminds me of a multitude of fragrances that were built around this one concept. Chypre de Coty is at once familiar, generic, classic, and unique.

Applied: This smells like perfume history. Like Mitsouko, with a rich, dry, beautiful soul. I own a new formulation of Mitsouko and it wasn’t until now that I realized how sharp she was, how she’s missing a certain gentleness and refine elegance that Chypre de Coty possesses and, I assume and will soon find out, vintage Mitsouko must have as well. Now I can be frustrated with the rest of the perfumistas! Yay! I mean–why, world? Why? Chypre de Coty goes on bitter and dry and green with a hint of barely there citrus and slowly changes and gets more and more personal on the skin as it introduces dense, clean florals and a fantastic powdered mossy base. It’s a classic chypre all right. I wasn’t kidding when I said this smells like history. And it makes me sad because this is from a fragrance era that no longer exists. And nothing made these days is going to come close due to reformulations and ingredient restrictions. I’m sad to be wearing some of this because it reminds me that none of this exists anymore and nothing like this will exist again.

Extra: Chypre de Coty died sometime in the 1980s. It’s a faint reminder of a time when fragrances like these were statements and masterpieces. These days Chypre de Coty–if someone were to even catch a whiff of it–is “old lady perfume”, a term I really wish people would stop using for things they don’t understand. I hear someone call something an “old lady’s perfume” and I think of people going into a minimalist art exhibition and complaining about how a bunch of lines on a white canvas could be considered art when their child could do better with their eyes closed.

Design: The bottle I’m familiar with is a simple, oval-cylinder glass container with a couple of embellishments on the glass body and a glass stopper. I wish I could say I’ve held a bottle of this vintage stuff but nope. The bottle looks beautiful though. The image pictured in this post is a vintage ad for Chypre de Coty and is not the bottle I describe here.

Fragrance Family: Chypre

Notes: Bergamot, jasmine, rose, patchouli, labdanum, oakmoss.

I’ll happily trade most of Coty’s present day offerings if only they could bring this back in the same formulation as the 1917 juice. There is truly nothing made these days that smells like this.

Reviewed in This Post: Chypre de Coty, circa 1940, Eau de Toilette.

Donna Karan Liquid Nude

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Cashmere Mist is one of the most popular Donna Karan fragrances. It was released in the early 90s (1994, I believe) and has been sold with much popularity since. Liquid Nude is the brand new 2010 flanker to Cashmere Mist. Liquid Nude

In Bottle: Light and floral. Reminds me of clean linen and fresh sheets with a hint of cleaned up sandalwood.

Applied: Floral top notes that lend a very feminine edge to this fragrance. It has quite a nice display of florals set against a seemingly always present perfumed sandalwood. The fragrance evolves into a clear and very floral jasmine mid-stage that lends to a nice airy clean linen-like scent. This smells like good soap and I can sort of see the connection to the original Cashmere Mist as this is set in a nicer, more modern stage than the original. It also smells a little bit younger too. The dry down is a pleasant smooth white floral with a bit of lingering warmed sandalwood mixed with a light vanilla. Pretty much the one thing you can take away from Liquid Nude here is that it’s a very good, very clear and clean floral and creamy woodsy fragrance.

Extra: Donna Karan has other fragrances with her name on them including the very popular DKNY Be Delicious line which is a big hit with younger women.

Design: I don’t know if “elegant” is quite the word I want to use here but the design of this bottle is slick and nicely designed. It reminds me of a variety of things but mostly, it’s a close interpretation of the original Cashmere Mist bottle in a nice shiny pinkish tone with the swan shape toned down and smoothed out.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Orange flowers, pink cyclamen petals, lily of the valley, sandalwood, ylang ylang, Moroccan jasmine, labdanum, jasmine, white amber, skin musk, suede, tonka, benzoin.

I’m actually not much of a fan of Cashmere Mist or this particular incarnation of it. It reminds me of the perfumes I grew up smelling and I suppose my nose is a bit dulled from it by now.

Reviewed in This Post: Liquid Nude, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Bleu de Chanel

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Bleu de Chanel is the latest mainstream release of men’s fragrances by the house. If you’ve been following Chanel’s fragrance releases, you might notice they’ve taken a few steps back from their classic style of fragrances and have gotten a bit more mainstream and mass market. Bleu de Chanel is just another indication of that. Bleu de Chanel

In Bottle: Smells like Cool Water by Davidoff. Also smells like Bath and Body Works’ Dancing Waters scent. Heck, while we’re still here let’s throw in a dash of Lacoste Essential. Yeah, I just compared a Chanel to Cool Water, Essential, and Bath and Body Works.

Applied: The truth is, Bleu de Chanel does one thing very, very well. It combines every aquatics based sporty men’s fragrance together to form this  amalgamation of sport men’s fragrances. If you own a bottle of Bleu de Chanel, you could conceivably replace every other bottle of aquatic sporty men’s fragrance you own. It’s just that generic. Bleu de Chanel opens with a sweet, sharp, clean aquatic note that reminds me immediately of aforementioned Dancing Waters, Cool Water and Essential combined together. Let it dry down a bit and it will evolve into a mixture of Dolce and Gabanna Light Blue pour Homme and Acqua di Gio. In truth, it’s got a fresh, spicy, woodsy mid-stage with an aromatic backing. Fairly on par for the course. The last act  is a woodsy base with citrus dashed in there for good measure. Also not particularly fascinating but highly wearable.

Extra: Hard to believe that Bleu de Chanel came from the same house that made No. 5, No. 22, No. 19, Coco, Coromandel, Sycamore. But times change and while a lot of perfumistas are going to be disappointed with Bleu de Chanel, this fragrance is a sign of the times. I hope that Chanel sells Bleu de Chanel very well. I hope it draws in a new following of perfume lovers but keeps the classics around and releases some some fragrances reminiscent of Chanel’s long heritage of sophistication.

Design: Bleu de Chanel is bottled in a gorgeous dark tinted glass rectangular bottle with a metallic cap that’s reminiscent of their Les Exclusifs line of fragrances. My favorite part of this fragrance is honestly the cap. I’m a sucker for magnets, what can I say? The quality of the packaging is excellent, as should be expected with Chanel, and the design is simple but very nice.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Aromatic

Notes: Bergamot, lemon, grapefruit, aqua, peppermint, pink pepper, nutmeg, ginger, jasmine, cedar, vetiver, patchouli, labdanum, frankincense.

I know a lot of perfume lovers are hating on Bleu de Chanel right now. I don’t blame them. I’m just as disappointed with this release as they are. But beneath the disappointment Bleu de Chanel is a pleasant, well-blended, easy to wear fragrance. It really does combine a good proportion of the aquatic sport men’s fragrance genre together to make a coherent and ultimately well-composed scent. I do highly recommend people who are looking for a really good aquatic sport fragrance to give Bleu de Chanel a sniff. It’s a good scent. It just doesn’t smell like a Chanel should.

Reviewed in This Post: Bleu de Chanel, 2010, Eau de Toilette.

Common Perfume Notes Made Easy

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Ever try to read out and make sense of a notes listing for a fragrance you love? Just what on Earth is muguet supposed to be? How do you even say that? And what’s this coumarin that everyone keeps talking about? And if you thought the notes list was complicated enough, just wait until you hear about the stuff they don’t list.

The following is a brief overview of some perplexing but common notes you might see in perfume.

Benzoin: Pronounced, “ben-zoh-in”, can refer to either the “benzoin resin” from trees in the Styrax genus or the organic compound, “benzoin”. Benzoin resin has a creamy, honey and vanilla fragrance.

Champaca: Pronounced, “cham-puk-uh”, is a tree from the magnolia family. It smells woodsy, spicy and green.

Coumarin: Pronounced, “koo-muh-rin”, is a chemical compound found in tonka beans, sweet grass, and a wide variety of other plants. It has a sweet hay scent.

Galbanum: Pronounced, “gal-bun-num”, is a gum resin from plants of the Ferula genus. It has a green, herbaceous and bitter scent.

Labdanum: Pronounced, “lab-dun-num”, is a resin obtained chiefly from plants of the Cistus genus. Labdanum smells sweet, dry and woodsy.

Muguet: Pronounced, “mew-gey”, is Lily-of-the-Valley. It has a light, very sheer but distinctive sweet aroma.

Olibanum: Pronounced, “O-lib-bun-num”, is frankincense. Smells like incense to me.

Opopanax: Pronounced, “oh-pop-pan-nax”, is a gum resin that smells woodsy and lightly floral undertones.

Oud: Pronounced, “ooh’d”, sometimes referred to as agarwood is the resin that is produced when an Aquilaria tree is infected with mold. Oud is said to smell dense, sweet, warm,  and woodsy.

Ylang Ylang: Pronounced, “ee-lang ee-lang”, is a flowering tree. Ylang ylang has a delicate, white floral fragrance.

L’Instant de Guerlain

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L’Instant’s one of those weird anomalies that give me a hard time when it comes to finding and purchasing it. Eventually I broke down, having looked for months with it eluding me, and dropped full price on a bottle. It felt ridiculous at the time that a very recent, rather popular fragrance like this, could be out or not stocked everywhere I looked.

I can see what some Guerlain fans can love about L’Instant. For one, it’s not the dreaded mix of fruits and florals in a bottle. Heaven forbid. L'Instant

In Bottle: Rich, sweet honey with a resiny background. It is almost a gourmand but the floral note in this is preventing it from getting there. The magnolia lends it a bit of powder to prevent the honey and amber from turning into a honeyed cream scent which would land it in gourmand territory for me.

Applied: Honey amps up immediately with this slightly sharp sting of citrus. The magnolias are creating this very fine sweetened floral fragrance a few moments later. The floral aspect does a good job working with the sweetness. I’m no longer detecting powder and there’s less and less of it as the magnolia fades away and the amber gets stronger. Once again L’Instant is skirting the gourmand line as it warms up from the initial blast of citrus. In the end, L’Instant goes out smelling like warm, sweet, golden amber.

Extra: Resins and resinous notes can include amber, labdanum, ambergris, frankincense, myrrh, benzoin, etc.

Design: Nicely shaped rounded corner bottle with slightly purple tinged clear glass showing off the light amber juice inside. The cap on the bottle I have has a nice weight to it unlike the flighty, flimsy clear plastic deals on the other Guerlains I own. I wish they would go with this denser feeling cap more often. It looks better, feels better, and helps class up the project.

Fragrance Family: Oriental

Notes: Citrus, honey, magnolia, golden amber.

It was a bit difficult choosing which way to go on this fragrance. To me, it is really close to being a gourmand despite having only one gourmand-esq note in it. Had the amber been vanilla this wouldn’t have been so hard. In the end I stuck to the safe bet as L’Instant does have the amber necessary and does have that thick, resinous golden base to it that could label it as an oriental even though it doesn’t truly slot itself neatly there either. See, people say oriental and I think resins and dark musky scents.  There’s no dark musk in L’Instant. In the end, I hate agonizing over something that’s essentially my opinion anyway so you get oriental.

Reviewed in This Post: L’Instant, 2010, Eau de Parfum.